Tourism capacity and economic growth in selected African economies

The Vector Autoregressive approach is used in this study to investigate the capacity of tourism on the economic growth in selected African countries. (Nigeria, South Africa, Morocco, Mauritius, Kenya, Tanzania, and Tunisia) with panel analyses using data from 1995 to 2022. The variables for the study include gross domestic product (GDP) as a proxy for economic growth, tourism receipts (TR), and tourist arrivals (TAR). The result from the study shows that in the short- run tourism receipts was positive but non-significant on the economic growth of the countries, while it was positive and significant in the long run. Tourist arrivals were negative and non-significant in the short- run but positive and significant in the long- run. This shows that tourism has some positive impact on the economies of the selected countries and that their capacity for economic growth is significant. The study concludes that investment in the tourism industry should be adopted as a development strategy, given that tourism has the potential to improve economic growth.